Lambertville, NJ – On Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 12 pm, the Rago Arts and Auction Center will host an important auction for serious collectors of the art of the Delaware River Valley. A second session features work by both American and European artists, including Jasper Cropsey and William Aiken Walker.

The sale opens with the session devoted to the Pennsylvania area artists. The cover lot “Brook near Weldon” by Edward Willis Redfield ($70,000 – $90,000), a fine winter landscape, was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1899, the year of its creation. This superb painting and a second by Fern Coppedge (a scene of Gloucester, Massachusetts estimated at $45,000-55,000) are both being sold by a generous consignor–benefactor to aid the Aark Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center.

The first lot of the sale is one of the finer works by George Sotter to come to market in recent years, from a family in Western Canada. Set in its original, signed Benard Badura frame, it depicts a barn with figures in a woodland setting. Another fine pastoral painting, Near the Union Mill, descended in the family of artist William Langson Lathrop to the current owner. Also of note as are a number of works by Walter Baum, four from a single consignor, fresh-to-market and acquired directly from the artist by a family member of the current owner. Other fine Pennsylvania Impressionist works include offerings from Harry Leith-Ross, Antonio Martino, Melville Stark, Alfred Nunamaker and Benard Badura.
Modernist are well-represented in two studies by Charles Rosen, eight works by Lloyd Ney, three by Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt and two pastels by Joseph Meierhans. A diverse selection of Contemporary artists are here, as well: Joseph Barrett, Joseph Crilley, Anthony Michael Autorino, Bruce Braithwaite, Paul Pusecker, William Jachwak, to name a few. Rago’s is very proud to be selling the work of a select group of Contemporary artists for the first time, including Jane Gilday, Glenn Harren, Robert Beck, Myles Cavanaugh, Colette Sexton, Barry Snyder and Judy Henn.
Also in the first session is a fine portfolio of collotypes by Andrew Wyeth with original portfolio and works from a number of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Academy artists, including Henry Rankin Poore, John Ramsey Conner, Nancy Maybin Ferguson (a member of the Philadelphia 10), William Trost Richards, Robert Henri, William Glackens and Everett Shinn.

The second session of the auction features works by American and European artists. Notable among these is Autumn Morning by Jasper Francis Cropsey, estimated at $10,000 -$15,000; two oils on board by William Aiken Walker (to be included in the upcoming catalogue raisonné); a night scene of the 1893 Columbia Exposition by Charles Courtney Curran; and two handsome oils of the California School by Hanson Duvall Puthuff and Charles Arthur Fries. We would draw your attention, as well, to sculpture by Eugune Gauss and Milton